Commissioned by San Francisco Asian Art Museum for the special exhibition Music for the Afterlife in May, 2017. Composer and pipa performed by Sophia Shen. Han Dynasty replica bronze bells performed by Stephen Parris and David Samas from Gamelan Encinal. The composition has won the 2017 Dunhuang Cup National Pipa Composition Competition Silver Award in China.

In this interactive improvisation, the dialog between the instrument and the computer is established upon amplification and processing of the neglected sounds of the instrument in SuperCollider. A pear-shaped, four-string plucked instrument that can be dated back to the late Han Dynasty around 2nd century CE, pipa is one of the most popular Chinese instruments and has been played for almost two thousand years in China. The decaying notes and enlarging spaces will connect the music between the acoustic and synthetic worlds. The performer plays an essential role in realizing the dialog between computer and instrument by listening and responding intensely to the sound in the moment.

Hymn is a folk improvisation with voice, pipa, percussion and live electronics based on the Icelandic hymn Heyr Himna Smiður (Hear, Smith of heavens). The piece uses pipa and abstract vocals to create a powerful soundscape of tension and grandiosity. The looping of the sounds conveys a dark ambient feeling that builds as the composition progresses. It’s a conversation and convergence of sounds from the two distant cultures.

The hymn that this composition is build on was written by Kolbeinn Tumason (1173-1208), just before 1208 AD, and is the oldest known nordic hymn. The music was composed over 700 years later by Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson (1938-2013).

This is a studio mix of a live performance. Kristopher Rodriguez Svönuson plays percussion.

captures the most unforgettable experience during the recording session in the middle of the ocean on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. It was the sonic traveling between the land and the underwater. Under the peaceful appearance of the surface was the incredibly dynamic world that I had never encountered, and everything was vividly unveiled in my headphone. But when I put down my headphone, everything seemed to disappear all of a sudden – only the world that I live in was left.

II. Rainstorm

is made in RTcmix using field recordings from my hometown Zhangzhou, Fujian, China during the summer storm season. Different techniques of sound synthesis, physical modeling and sample processing were applied in order to sonically transform and reconstruct the gloomy, depressing, and overwhelming visual memory of the frequent thunderstorms, as well as to juxtapose the fantasy and the reality.

III. The Last 23 of Us

takes the data of the estimated population size of the Hainan black-crested gibbon from 1950 to nowadays. The data is mapped into different parameters of the FM synthesizer and the IIR filter in RTcmix in order to show the rapid decline of the population in the past 65 years. Every 10 years equals 20 seconds of the piece. The frequency range also shrinks, which signifies the shrinkage of gibbon distribution over the years. The Hainan black crested gibbon or Hainan gibbon (Nomascus hainanus), is a species of gibbon found only on Hainan Island, China. The Hainan black-crested gibbon is under grave threat of extinction. They are currently identified as Critically Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List.